Sanctuary
by jazzy2may
Summary: Spike is trying to figure out why he's being tormented by ghosts and what are these feelings he has for Harris? Slash Spike/Xander


**If you dislike stories like this please free to hit the back-button now. No like No read No Flame Please.

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**Sanctuary  
**written by: Jazzy  
Pairing: Xander /Spike

Warning: WIP, First Time, Hurt Comfort, Dark Themes AU Season 7 

Summary: Spike is trying to figure out why he's being tormented by the ghosts. :) Also he's trying to figure out his emotions for Xander and if Xander returns his feelings.

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PART ONE**

I didn't understand it at the time. Why was she doing this to me? I was a no one, a no body, a nothing; I was a lowly scummy vampire, the sleeze that had tried to rape her.

I knew they loathed me and hated me and couldn't stand the sight of me.

Why was she doing this to me?

Torturing me like this?

I meant it, when I asked her. "Can we rest Buffy?"

"Can we rest now?"

I was so tired. So weary in body and mind. I had suffered so much. I was insane from all of my suffering and it didn't seem to make any difference to her. I should have been angry, or frustrated, instead I was sad.

I had made others suffer in the past this was penance. I made them suffer even more than I ever had. Most of my victims were innocent yes, but others had deserved what I did to them. I always had a reason for my actions. Petty, though my reasons had been. As a vampire I had gotten my revenge on all of my tormentors mortal and otherwise. I killed Cecily and mum, they rejected me. I made them suffer so much, so much, but this felt pretty close to what I had put them through, this felt even-steven to me. It felt like the scales were in balance now.

Surely, she would let me rest now?

Surely?

Surely, I deserved to rest now. I helped her. I got my soul back for her. I helped her win against the big bads in this world. Surely it was enough?

Wasn't it enough?

I barely felt the cross burn my flesh it was the only thing keeping me propped up otherwise I would have been on my knees in a church that held no forgiveness for me. I wasn't right in the head any more, not that I ever had been quite right in there, not with Dru as my sire. Even when I had been mortal I had never quite been right.

Something had gone wrong. I knew something was terribly wrong with me. I was so numbed and fatigued, numb in body, numb in my soul; even my mind didn't feel sharp or like it belonged to me.

I felt muddled.

I felt a self-loathing so great and huge I never thought I would be able to look out from under its oppressive weight of darkness. It was my deepest, darkest, depression ever. Not even my break up with Dru could compare to it. I truly, deep down, felt I needed, no, deserved, to die.

I truly felt empty of substance, like marionette doll, empty of life, empty of emotion. I was an empty vessel.

No, wait, I close my eyes and remember, I touch the thing that burns in me. I'm not empty. The spark is there. The cross cannot touch the searing I feel inside of me. The searing that is the spark.

The spark in me was burning.

It burned like the sun yet showed me none of the sun's mercy, for in the sun's blazing rays I would die and turn to ashes then dust then nothing at all, till only an ugly memory of me was left in the minds of the scoobies.

The spark burned from within and gave me life, light where there had once been only darkness and cruelty.

This spark of sun, this spark of God's love, this soul that claimed me for God's child, made me weep.

I close my eyes more tightly. I tremble. I can feel it even more strongly. I commune with it. I embrace it. I went through much to get it back for her. To be human for her, so that she could love me as I loved her.

It's burning me, bathing me in light from within. Burning all the way through me obliterating the darkness that warred with it within me. Yet it could not completely destroy it… the dark chill of the grave. The enemy was still within me. I was as much a child of darkness as I was a child of the light. I had reveled in chaos, loved the feel of the fist and blood, I had enjoyed the screams of my victims. There was still a small part of me that remembered these terrible desires and wished to go back to those days.

I had lived in evil, been evil, played as evil for more years than I had lived as a good human being. I now wanted to be good. I wanted with all my heart to be good. I knew it was a choice, not like Angel, he may have his soul, but in truth Angel was under compulsion, under a spell. He doesn't have the choices I do. He doesn't have a choice to be good or be bad.

I was not under a spell I was not like my true Sire. There was still in me potential for both the good and the bad. I was human in one sense for I had the choice now. I had a soul I could lose again if I wasn't vigilant. I could be either one of those things, good or evil. Evil still taints me still calls to me. I can't escape its' talons but the light comforts me and whispers things to me.

I loved even when I was evil. I love now even stronger for I now know truly what love is. It's the fire. The spark.

It burns bright, so bright.

It burns painful.

It burns true and scorching, branding me.

Poor Buffy she doesn't know what to do with me. She's more afraid of me now than she ever was when I was a sane oober evil vampire.

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Btvs: Sanctuary**

part 2

The Spark burns

In between deciphering what was real and not real, I started living, coping, again. Yeah, I was losing time. I would go to sleep then wake somewhere else. Or between one thought and another I wound up in odd sorts of places in town, never remembering how I got there or why I was there. But for the most part I was living. I was alive.

I didn't bother to think too much about it or on it. Why I was having these black outs and praying every night not to have one, hoping I wasn't doing anything bad while I was having one of those la-la moments.

I knew I wasn't sane, and really, what would or even could the Scoobies do about it?

There was nothing any of them could do. Realistically. Nothing at all, and besides, they hated me.

I never liked me self. As a vampire, as a soulless creature of the night, a devout child of chaos, I had been the Big Bad, I had reveled in the evils I had committed, I over came my nerd status and made them all pay for what they had done to me. I never once felt guilt or sorrow for those atrocities I had committed. Not while I had been a demon.

Now, I was ensouled. I felt terrible about everything. I was mad from the grief of it. How could any soul carry this burden? How could one even begin to make restitution for all the evil he had done? How do you live with this, how should anyone live with this? Is this what criminals feel when they're behind bars and have nothing left to think on but for their sins? How do you even begin to heal or bargain for your sanity? Should someone like me even be allowed to live at all?

For all the wrongs I had done I knew there was no penance harsh enough, no forgiveness in anyone's heart for what I had been, and still in some part of me, I still am the evil creature I once was. I wont let the evil in me out I fight so hard to keep it under control. I am so tired though.

Heavy are my burdens.

Terrible are my sins.

How do I keep bearing it? How do I keep living? Will I ever get my sanity back?

Will I ever know forgiveness?

Or Peace?

Odd thing occurred. Xander became a haven for me. I think on this and think how amazing that is. I know he doesn't particularly like me. I know we did this living together thing once before, and that whole thing hadn't worked out at all for us.

We were still enemies back then and maybe even now still so. Yet Xander had become a strange haven for me. A sanctuary unlooked for, a place for comfort and quiet understanding. He looks at me these days and I don't see the hate there once was in his eyes any more. He looks tired. Not as tired as I, but still tired.

He's aged since the last time we shared accommodations. I don't mean physically nor age-wise, though that is true for both, no it's in the maturity; in the way he nurtures me; he's got a lot of compassion. He doesn't judge me any more.

He looks at me with so much understanding that sometimes it's all I can do not to break down in front of him. His eyes read all of that and more.

When did he get to be so observant?

He never used to be that way when we shared his rat hole basement apartment in his family's house. I never thought Xander would ever reach this level of growth.

I shortchanged him, underestimated him. I sized him up once or twice back then; I had always found him lacking. He had been simply a human being, a vampire happy meal – all right, not even that to me! I would have gladly ripped out his throat and let his blood drain to the earth, reveled and gloried in the killing of him; but no, I wouldn't have eaten him. He'd have had it coming to him back then, he had rightly deserved that kind of revenge, my kind of revenge on him, back then.

Back then he'd always been pathetic, always so irritating and aggravating and annoying. He'd been petty and hurtful to me on any number of occasions. Oh I admit I wasn't a good guy and I did probably deserve a lot of his ire. He'd been a puppy eager and yapping all the time to kill me, some times amusing as hell but most of the time simply irritating.

Xander had been a normal, well a somewhat normal every day jo, just with a little more knowledge of the bad in this world than most. There had been nothing about him to make him stand out from any of the others. He'd been an okay warrior but I'd fought better than him, yet somehow he survived Sunny Hell and the midnight patrolling and slayings in the graveyards.

There had been nothing, absolutely nothing about him that had been special, nothing out standing, nothing awe inspiring. There had never been anything particularly magnetic about him despite his demon magnet status; no, to me he'd been just a loser back then.

He had my disgust and dislike because I think he very much reminded me of me-self back in my pre-vamps days.

I think about it some more trying to figure out what it was about him now that called to me. Well, maybe there was just one thing that set him apart from the rest, kind of shiny, he shines in my mind like the spark, he's noble and good, he's a human champion, a true knight. His loyalty to the slayer bint, to the watcher and to his schoolgirl chum was the only thing about him remotely inspiring.

Back in the day I'd view him as others had once viewed me.

Pathetic! (He and I)

Loser! (He and I)

Nancy boy. Mummy's boy William with his lousy bloody awful poetry. William the bumbler.

Xander and I had no luck except bad luck. No luck in love and no luck in life. No luck at all but for bad, bad, luck.

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Btvs: Sanctuary**

Part 3

We are Children of one of the Firsts. A childe of powerful Vampires. We are Children of Darla, I am a Grandchilde of Angelus and a childe of Drucilla Our line is one of the most powerful among the clans of vampire. Their blood is magic and in me is magic from them. I can do things magical, if I have need to. But magic always has a price, no matter if its bad or good, there is always a price.

Connect the dots luvs, I have a little bit of premonition, after all, my sire was Dru, her blood runs through me. I see the visions and they are terrible, terrible things.

I see things,

She mocks me. I see her standing before me. Her lips move in words that hiss with hate and undertones of lust She wishes to twist me to her games. Twist the world make it sing with blood and sex, make it a nightmare I cannot escape from. She mocks me.

Oh, how she laughs at me. Calls me impotent drives me wild as Dru, drives me into despair as Buffy, makes me weep like a babe when it is my Mother who stands before me in her moment as a vampire, telling me hurtful hateful disgusting things.

But all she says is true.

I scream and cut and scrape away flesh until I bleed and even then I still cut away until there is bone, all I want to do is die. All I want is for her to leave me alone.

She is Buffy again. Mocking me still, laughing at me, calling me pathetic, impotent. I was still a neutered vampire, weak and helpless.

She made me hate, hate Buffy and hate Dru and hate meself most of all.

Was it not all true?

Wasn't I weak and pathetic? I was relying on the Scoobies to save me ass and I didn't even deserve their help. I was a pitiful creature, not even a man.

I want to escape her. I want to escape this torture. My skin is healing. I know it is her doing. I'm starting to think that she's not apart of my imagination or part of my madness. I think she might be real.

A substantial creature, a person made of magic like me. However, more powerful than I, more powerful than I will ever be, how can I ever hope to defeat her?

I despair. That's what she wants. Though I fight against the despair its all that I know how to do of late.

She rarely comes to Xander's – to our apartment.

I run there and shut the door in her face. She's not welcome here. Not when she's Dru. Not when she's Buffy. Not when she's one of the others she likes to turn into to torment me. She likes to morph a lot that one does. She likes to unsettle me, watch me like a scientist through a magnifying glass. I'm a bug caught under the glass feeling the heat of the sun, scorching me, killing me.

She unsettles me, unmans me in every way possible.

She's still laughing at me; even through the door I can still hear her.

Xander doesn't see her or hear her, of course, he never does. I don't think she wants him to know her just yet. Or possibly, quite possibly, no one else can see or hear her, only I can. Which then makes me re-evaluate my earlier hypothesis. Perhaps she isn't real but in me head?

Quite possibly she didn't heal my wrists or arms or thighs; that quite possibly, I'm bleeding all over Xander's lovely carpet and textiles. But I don't see any blood anywhere, nothing at all. Maybe I didn't hurt meself, like I thought I had?

Maybe it was all in my head.

I'm insane.

The Spark doesn't make me sane or good it's just the missing piece of me that searches for the other half of me. It burns me through and through and lets me know I'm real and alive, even if I'm still dead and still a twisted vampire striving to be good. I'll be good because I know I need to be and I know Buffy will need me.

My blood sings this to me. Dru's blood sings it to me. I know something's coming, some kind of reckoning. The visions say this is so.

I feel safe in Xander's – mine and Xander's home.

Like I said, she doesn't come in here all that often. She's not wanted here. I don't know what it is that keeps her out of here but maybe there's a rule, like vampires and invites, she can't come in because she's not wanted here.

But that still doesn't explain how she can still come in here. Especially at night, she can still creep in to our home, sneak up on me in me bed torment me all night long, pardon, all day long.

But quite possibly, it might just be all in me head. It might be only meself that is torturing me. Maybe it's only the madness? Yet, I doubt that it is just me mind playing tricks on me. I really believe she's a cat and I'm her little mouse.

She likes to play her games and what makes it fun for her is when she lets me think I'm safe then she comes and appears again in front me tearing me down, it was a favorite game of Angelus' too, and one of me own fun games back when I was evil. I'd make my victims weep and beg like a terrified child, hell sometimes they were terrified children, I liked me sick games back then now I don't I can't stand that I'm still alive.

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Btvs: Sanctuary**

Part 4

It's peaceful here.

We have routines.

I go out sometimes and Xan, he lets me, he lets me go out on my own. He doesn't ask questions, doesn't give me the third degree like before or like Buffy or the Watcher would have.

He's not like he was back then. He gives me space and time. He lets me be.

He's a good housemate, Xan is. He respects my privacy and I respect his. Yes, he bitches and complains sometimes but only when things have become too much for him to handle. He didn't sign up to be my nanny or my nurse and he sure as hell doesn't want to be my servant, cleaning up after me. (What he don't know is that sometimes I leave the wet towels on the floor just so I can hear him bitch at me. It gives me a tiny thrill. I'm still a vampire and there's still a little grain of wickedness in me. I like chaos, its fun, when it doesn't turn deadly.)

Sometimes though I forget things and I'm not a good housemate on purpose. Even though he bitches and complains it's not that often. Its as if he knows, as if he understands, really understands what it is I'm going through.

We…we get along now.

We get along better then we ever have before. I can't think what life was like without him now. I rely on him too much.

Xander's changed so much in these few years an eye blink for me a nightmare of a life for him, trial by fire, life and death at the edge of the sword. He's more of a man than any in this time of fast food and mottle-coddle children. Today's children are spoilt rotten they don't know the meaning of things, but Xan does.

Xan thinks on things now, he's a lot kinder now, and a lot more introspective now than he ever was before.

We're allies he and I. He can still be at times unwittingly cruel I don't mind that. It gives me comfort, tells me he hasn't changed all that much after all, that he's still Xander, he's the same and I … I am comforted by that.

He's saved my life. He's given me safety. Given to me what little sanity I still have left to possess within me. He's given me a reason to strive towards that sanity and work hard for its return. He's given me balance. He's given me peace.

I know he's still afraid of me. I know its only natural that he be so. I am still a vampire. I still drink blood to live. However, most importantly of all to remember and be most afraid of, is that I am not a sane creature.

I am unpredictable, more so now than I ever was before. He should be afraid of me, very, very afraid of me. Treat me careful pet, for I might turn on you though I do not wish to.

I do not wish to hurt anyone any more. I do not desire to kill or maim or harm another living creature, at least in the moments when I'm lucid and when I am reasonably sane, I do not want these things but I fear.

Yes, I fear.

I fear greatly that when I am not lucid I do terrible things. I cannot trust my body or my mind. If I cannot trust meself then no one should trust me.

I'm well aware of what I can do and I know the Scoobies have to be well aware that I am dangerous. They should know that I should be put out of my misery and that I shouldn't be allowed to hurt anyone else ever again.

Xan should fear me.

They all should truly fear me.

He doesn't seem to know how afraid I am. Of how terrified I am that I'm doing terrible things when I am not, for lack of a better description, meself. I fear my self, I fear Her, I fear for Xander, and I am afraid of Xander, of my feelings for him.

It's growing day by day, these feelings I have for my flat mate, growing and spreading like the Spark in side of me. Its growing, burning, singing to me, resonating with him, these feelings like my soul are growing inside of me and I… I am so afraid of it, of the feelings, and the soul, of both.

I'm rocking on me heals back and forth back and forth, rocking with me arms wrapped around me. My nails bite through the flesh of me arms as I hold on in a terrified stupor.

What a wretch! What a cowardly sort I've become!

Have at me soul! I taunt. I hiss out loud. "Burn me. Burn in me. Burn from inside and turn me to ash and let me be scattered on the winds!"

Xander's eyes are dark and wide, his skin grown pale with fear for me.

When did he get home? Did he hear all of it? I should have heard him, sensed him, scented him or something. But this is his domain. I can't tell him from the furniture in the room. Now that I see him I can hear his heart beating in my ears.

Wait, how did I get here, in his arms? I scent him and hear him and I drown in him. His heat burns me like the Spark only not from within but from without and burrows down deep into my cold dead heart, through my skin. He's holding me as if he wont ever let me go.

I hope he doesn't. I really do hope he never lets me go.

I love Buffy; but she can't handle how much I give; how much I lose meself in the ones I love. I give everything, every shred of me, until there is nothing left to distinguish me from them. I always will love her but she's a Slayer, our love was always doomed. Besides, she doesn't love me.

She never could love me, nor would she ever desire to love me. That was a hard realization for me to come by. She was never going to love me. Never.

I was the big bad, then the big nothing. I made Xan in comparison look like a he-man of winners compared to me. Why did I think I could win her love?

For me, love is like my soul, like the Spark burning me from within, burning outward reaching for the sun, burning me out. I can't live without love.

I'm needy, so needy.

The poet in me I guess.

I'm a dependant, an enabler; abuse me, treat me like slime on your shoe but let me love. Let me love you completely.

Quite possibly, it was the poet in me that made me this way or most likely the product of the times I had grown up in.

Like flame and oxygen the flame cannot live without its explosive incendiary partner. I can't exist unless I love and am in love. I cannot live without love.

The dreamer too, I guess. What is most true though is that I need love. I need it.

Angelus loved how brilliant and inventive I could be, that too was the poet part of me. I fly high and crash hard to the earth. My emotions are quick silver and mercury. Angelus hated the impatient parts of me. He was my Yoda and I admired and loved him even if he grated on my nerves and fucked my Dru on top me.

I've never been the most rational person or rational vampire, come to think of it, I've never truly been very sane either, not when alive not when dead, this insanity I have now is merely another level of the same insanity I've always had in me. I'm a child of chaos. Chaos is always insane.

Xander has come to mean so much to me. He's rocking me or else keeping time with my rocking, I don't know which, I can't tell me from him at the moment. It's perfect, this sense of getting lost in him. It's all that I ever wanted.

He takes care of me. He sees to my every need. He comforts me when I need it. Like now, he lets me cry without censure or disgust.

He'll hold me… sometimes. Not always of course, after all Xander isn't my cuddle bunny, he's my house mate, but for now he's also my caregiver and he seems to know when to put his own pride aside and take me into his arms like now and just… holds me… until I can't cry any more, until all that is left is a dried up, dry heaving vampire with half a mind.

I like that. I like it when he holds me. I like it a lot. I have no pride and I'm needy. I'm not the same man-vampire that I was last year or the hundred years previous to today. I've changed.

I'm changed.

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**Part 5**

Xander has been changed also. He's very insightful, terrifyingly so to me, how insightful he is. It scares me. I think he might just know how truly, how very much, he has come to mean to me. And how very much I need him.

He keeps holding me. Comforts me. I fall asleep. He has left me to sleep on my own in my protective half barricaded, thrashed room. It looks like a tornado hit the place. Clothes and furnishings scattered all about, my mattress on the floor, all of it my own doing of course.

I wake to hear the song. I begin to lose myself again.

"ee-rly one mor-orn-ing I heard a young lady s-ing-ing….la-dee-da dee-da."

I fade out completely by the time the first chorus is sung but I do know I am humming along with it. It is a song I know very well. But I can't recall where I used to hear it sung at or who it was sung by.

The fog is all around me and I am faded. I am enshrouded in a different kind of peace and in a different kind of love. Yet in spite of the serenity I feel a pain, dull and deep and cold, not like the Spark that burns but like the winter chill seeping in making me numb stealing all me heat away.

When I come awake I am deeply disturbed and perturbed. What did I do? Where am I? How did I get here? Where is here? Where am I?

I deeply buried pain stabs at me.

I killed her.

Twisted her… twisted her… twisted...

Mother….?

I taste blood and salt… taste sex as well on my tongue.

I feel dirty,

Elated,

Accomplished.

I feel sick

What did I do?

The scent lingers… the notes fade.

I am now truly awake and more afraid than ever before. My whole body shivers and twitches. What have I done?

I can smell it. I can smell and feel sex on me. I can taste it still, I'm wet with it. I feel spent from it, thrilled from it, afraid from it.

Copper still on my tongue its taste, blood, makes me salivate for more, but where did it come from? Who's blood have I taken? Whose blood still lingers on my tongue and on my fangs making me yearn and hunger for more even while I am disgusted with myself for eating a human. For feeling full yet hungering for more. I ache terribly.

I am terrified. What if the Slayer finds out? She'll bloody stake me. I tremble in more fear.

I only know of one person who I can turn to who will make me feel better. Who will take my fears from me, and sooth, and ease me.

I want Xander.

**

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Btvs: Sanctuary**

Part 6

I look all around me for some clue as to where and how far away I am from my only rock of support, from my Xander. I'm in an empty place with fresh turned earth and soil under my feet and under that which I stood on I knew it for a grave was something rotting, something like death… something…someone…someone I can feel connected to in a bad way, something like Master Vampire and Minion, sings to me, whispers to me of Vampire and Childe.

My brain runs from this, telling me, "I don't recognize this bond. I don't recognize this place of death."

My heart whispered, still some more, "and soon… very soon…. birth."

My head aches like when I was chipped and when I did something bad to a human. It's so intense this pain: a painful throbbing, spots and different colors, dancing before my eyes. It's a migraine. I want to go home.

I want to be with Xander. Xander will make the bad things go away. I flee from this place scrambling and finally getting through the cellar doors and I run from this place and the unsettled feelings inside of me, the feelings of trepidation and fear that thrummed through my warmth filled and flowing blood.

Xander will calm me. Xander will take away the fear.

Maybe this time Xander will go further than before and … touch me. Maybe he will kiss me, not on my forehead like a child receiving comfort and benediction, but kiss me like a lover. Perhaps this will be the time Xander will take one of his strong big hands, honest hands, gentle hands, and wrap it around my ache, not the ache in my head but the ache between my legs and bring me to combustion.

I dream that maybe this time we will go to his room and he will kiss me and kiss me and kiss me still some more, every where all over my body, no boundaries between us, no cloth only skin on skin, silky lips planting succulent incendiary kisses on my skin. His hands spread me wide, my legs and hips encourage him.

He takes me deep, his thrusts are delicious and strong like he is, his strokes find that place deep, deep inside, brushing and caressing the ache bringing it to painful inconsolable need, making me beg for more, needing more, spearing me, split me open make me come. His hand lovingly moves in time with his thrusts making me throb in both sensitive needy places, making me scream more.

I want to come. I want Xander to make me come.

I want him to take me, master me, make me his forever. His bitch, his slave, his lover, his for whatever he wants from me. Be forever in his mercy, feel his kiss sear me like the soul in me that sears me burns me ignites my heart more fiercely than I have ever felt it.

His hands are the hands of love, deliverer of mercy and death.

I want a t-shirt that says it plain enough for everyone to read. "Love's Bitch I Am. I'm Not Proud. Love Me."

I burst in through the lobby of our apartment building. People are giving me odd looks. There were too many people here for my comfort. I don't know why they're staring at me. I take the stairs and run all the way up four flights of stairs and then I twist the doorknob off of our apartment door and I break in to our home. It is as I stumble in that I realize why the people stared at me. I've got tears streaming down my cheeks and spots of blood at my mouth (most probably) and blood discretely in places on my clothes.

I'm practically hysterical as I gasp out his name. "Xander."  
"Xander. Xander. Oh God. Xander. H-help me Mate." I weep, sob and fall to the floor as if sundered by some Slayer brat's stake. I don't know why I'm so afraid or why I'm hysterical. I don't know how the blood got on me. I don't know anything at all. I just know something's not right. That I've done something, something terrible and he's the only one I can trust. The only one I want.

The only one who can forgive me or punish me. I don't owe anyone anything just him. Because I love him.

I've done something bad or something bad has happened to me, I don't know which. I can't remember anything. I can't remember if I'm the one in trouble or if something bad happened because I did it or if I witnessed something and did nothing or… there were so many ideas running wild in my head and simply put, I couldn't remember.

I just can't remember. All I know is its something bad. Really bad. Really, really, terribly, bad.

I want him to love me and forgive me or love me and punish me or just to simply love me. He can make the bad things go away. She can't come in here when Xander is here. She can't torment me as long as Xander is holding me.

Xander puts his arms around me. He whispers in my ear comfort and hugs me close. He's so warm, my Xan is. He warms me straight through and the chill of the night of what I might have done leaves me. I fall further to pieces in his arms. When did I become such a whiny nancy bitch? I can't answer that question and I can't make myself turn from Xander's comfort or force the yearning out of my heart. He holds me and doesn't ask me questions.

Some time passes I'm reluctant to leave his arms but I feel dirty and I'm getting him dirty as well. He shrugs and waves his hand as if to say, "Blood? Dirt? Its all the same to me, no big deal." But he lets me go wash and lets me borrow one of his shirts. His shirts are big and broad like he is and just as warm and just as comforting. They smell just like him; spice and sunlight and comfort. His arms are around me again I don't dare cry, not this time. I'm not going to be weak.

I receive comfort, he strokes my back and my hair, he wipes the traces of my tears away, he holds me and rocks me. We're in his bedroom on his bed. His mouth kisses mine, his tongue slips in and gently strokes and curls around my own. Making me moan with pleasure. He's everything I dreamed he would be, and so much more, so much more gentle, more gentle than I had a right to expect. In every experience I've ever had with this kind of loving it had always been harsh and about conquering rather than loving.

Xander, oh Xander.

Time passes, his heart beat lulls me into a daze and then to sleep. His whispers of allegiance and support comfort me. He tells me that no matter what he will help me. He's sad and introspective, his gaze his all knowing.

He is not blind to blood on my clothes or the blood still lingering in my mouth when he finally kissed me. His arms around me do more to cement his claims of friendship and alliance and support then ever his words had.

He's still holding me. His eyes don't leave my face. He will protect me. He will guard me and guide me. He is my lover.

He smiles at me and the last of my fears leave me. I can't even remember what it was anymore that I was so afraid of. I don't remember that I have done something wrong and that he will eventually turn against me after he finds out about it. I don't remember any of the reasons why I came home so afraid and so upset. Xander gives me another lingering loving kiss and then he sighs and his soft snores are the guide for me to follow him into sleep.

She can't come here. Xan keeps her out. The spark and his are joined. Together we keep her out. He is my rock. I am the thing that rides the wind and the thing that he anchors.

I've found it. I've found it at last.

This is my Sanctuary.

* * *

**TBC** - eventually - Jazzy (2-01-08)

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